To create this image i used two lights, one focused on the background to eliminate the shadows in back and another flashlight placed in front of the model placed high up to try create a slight light triangle on the right side of his face.
With this image i created it by using a black background and a continuous light placed on the side of the models face, placed at an angle to black out half the face creating a mysterious look to the photograph.
Butterfly lighting
The examples below show a lighting technique called butterfly lighting it is when there is a shadow formed at the bottom of the nose on the cupids bow which forms a shape of a butterfly.
To embed your understanding of the origins of photography and its beginnings you’ll need to produce a blog post which outlines the major developments and practices. Some will have been covered in the documentary above but you also need to research and discover further information.
Your blog post must contain information about the following and keep it in its chronological order:
Camera Obscura & Pinhole photography
Nicephore Niepce & Heliography
Louis Daguerre & Daguerreotype
Henry Fox Talbot & Calotype
Robert Cornelius & self-portraiture
Julia Margeret Cameron & Pictorialism
Henry Mullins & Carte-de-Visit
Each must contain dates, text and images relevant to each bullet point above. In total aim for about 1,000-2000 words.
Try and reference some of the sources that you have used either by incorporating direct quotes, paraphrasing or summarising of an idea, theory or concept, or historical fact.
Film notes
-1928, André Kertész’s meudon piece was an eye opener to photography.
-Camera obscura or pinhole photography is a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side through which an image is projected onto a wall or table opposite the hole. It is a natural method of creating unique and interesting pieces, in which the room becomes the camera. It is also the origin of photography
-It was well known that certain chemicals are reactive to light, e.g. silver salts. This was firstly used to try to capture images however the pictures would fade away shortly after appearing.
-Henry Fox Talbot was know as the inventor of the first photograph. In 1834 he discovered how to make and fix images through the action of light and chemistry on paper. These ‘negatives’ could be used to make multiple prints and this process revolutionised image making.
-De Geer’s photography style copies the subject onto metal plates, showing incredible detail and being one of the first methods of photography.
-Nicéphore Niépce was one of the most important figures in the invention of photography. He was born in France 1765, and was an amateur scientist, inventor and artist. In 1807, together with his brother, he invented the world’s first internal combustion engine, which they called the pyreolophore.
-Heliography is a photographic process that was invented by Nicéphore Niepce. In some cases – it is still used today (mainly for photo engraving). It was the process of Heliography that created the first and earliest known permanent photograph, taken from a nature scene.
-In February 2014 a daguerreotype self-portrait taken by the American photography pioneer Robert Cornelius of Philadelphia was considered the first American photographic portrait of a human ever produced, and since this was a self-portrait, it was also possibly the first selfie.
-Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer who is considered one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. Pictorialism, an approach to photography that emphasizes beauty of subject matter, tonality, and composition rather than the documentation of reality.
Essay
The very first type of photography ever invented was the camera obscura or pinhole photography. This method was created by Alhazen or Ibn Al-Haytham, as well as the pinhole camera which is based on the same idea. He carried out experiments with candles and described how the image is formed by rays of light travelling in straight lines. In order to accomplish camera obscura is to use a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side, through which an image is projected onto a wall or table opposite the hole. It is a natural method of creating unique and interesting pieces, in which the room becomes the camera. It is also the very first showcase of being able to copy scenery from one place to another.
Moving on to Heliography. It is a photographic process that was invented by Nicéphore Niepce. It was this process that created the first and earliest known permanent photograph, taken from a nature scene. It is still sometimes used today, although mainly for photo engraving. In order to create a heliograph, traces of solar energy are burnt into the film material using self-constructed devices and lenses with a diameter of up to one meter. Afterwards, the shots are then enlarged and printed on either; paper, the film sheets are directly shown in lightboxes, or the film slides themselves are projected onto hangar-sized walls.
Next in the timeline is Louis Daguerre and his Daguerreotype of photography. Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre was a French artist and photographer who invented a new process to photography. The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process from 1839 to 1860 made it possible to capture the image seen inside a camera obscura and preserve it as an object. This meant it was the first practical photographic process, and it ushered in a new age of pictorial possibility. In order to make a daguerreotype the silver-plated copper plate had first to be cleaned and polished until the surface looked like a mirror and was to be handled with great care. The plate, held in a lightproof holder, was then transferred to the camera. After exposure to light, the plate was developed over hot mercury until an image appeared. To fix the image, the plate was immersed in a solution of sodium thiosulfate or salt and then toned with gold chloride. While being an impressive discovery and process, it was incredibly toxic to humans due to the number of dangerous chemicals involved, including mercury, cyanide, and sulfuric acid.
After Daguerre, Henry Fox Talbot created a new method of photography called the Calotype. William Henry Fox Talbot was an English scientist, inventor, and photography pioneer who invented the salted paper and calotype processes, precursors to photographic processes of the later 19th and 20th centuries. He was born on February 11, 1800, and died 77 years later on September 17, 1877. Calotype or talbotype is an early photographic process introduced in 1841 using paper coated with silver iodide. Paper texture effects in calotype photography limits the ability of this early process to record low contrast details and textures. To produce a calotype, Talbot created a light-sensitive surface by coating a sheet of paper, usually writing paper, with a solution of silver nitrate. He dried the paper to some degree and coated it with potassium iodide to produce silver iodide. Compared to the daguerreotype, many people saw the calotypes differences as flaws. The process was slower, and chemicals weren’t regulated and often impure which led to inconsistent results. Also, the fixing of an image was still a problem, as prints often faded over time.
Robert Cornelius was an American photographer and pioneer in the history of photography. He designed the photographic plate for the first photograph taken in the United States, which was an image of Central High School taken by Joseph Saxton in 1839. Cornelius shot the first successful portrait, a self-portrait to be exact, using the venerable daguerreotype as well as his own makeshift camera with the lense being made out of opera glass. He took advantage of the light outdoors to get a faster exposure but still had to stand motionless for around 15 to 20 mins. He became the first ever self-portrait photographer.
Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer who is considered one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. She was an ambitious and devoted pioneer of photography who was best known for her powerful portraits often using the style of pictorialism. Born on June 11th, 1815, in India she would later pass on January 26rh 1879. Pictorialism, an approach to photography that emphasizes beauty of subject matter, tonality, and composition rather than the documentation of reality. Cameron and her pictorialist contemporaries pursued painterly compositions, subjects, and qualities, hoping to elevate photography to a high art, a representation of a person or thing in a work of art. She revolutionised photography and immortalised the age of the eminent Victorian through her monumental photographs with her use of muzzy focus and dramatic lighting (including both sunshine and moonlight) against voluminous dark, her portraits were extremely famous in their day and have never gone out of style.
Henry Mullins was the first professional photographer to come to Jersey and establish a portraiture business in the very early days of photography. He is best known for his cartes de visite which were small photographic portraits of a person that were mounted on a piece of card. They were very popular as well as being very inexpensive. In 1864, the cost for these photos were between 25 cents and 50 cents in addition to the 3 cents tax. The cost would be equal to £3.17 to £6.30 today. While he mainly worked on portrait photographs, he would also take some family photos too.
Photography originally started in 1839 by members of the French Académie des Sciences.
Camera obscura and pinhole photography:
The Camera Obscura was essentially the first ‘camera’ as it was a room with a hole in it. During the second half of the 16th century it became very popular as it aids drawings and paintings, even though the earliest use of the camera obscura dates back to around 400 BC. The camera obscura worked by blacking out the room, only having a single hole to allow the light through. As the light flowed in to the black-out room, the view from outside was projected on to the walls. However, the image was projected upside-down as there wasn’t a mirror, like in a camera, to flip it around.
The camera obscura aided the creation of pinhole photography and the pinhole camera in 1811. The pinhole camera consisted of a lightproof box, an aperture and light-sensitive material. When the shutter is opened light passes through the pinhole (aperture), projecting an inverted image on to a piece of film or paper which was on the opposite side of the camera. The image produced by the pinhole camera was inverted and smaller but it was real. The pinhole camera relied on light traveling in straight lines, which is why the image projected appeared upside down.
Nicephore Niepce & heliography:
Nicephore Niepce was a French inventor, born in 1765 and died in 1833. He invented heliography (which he called sun drawings) in 1827, this is the first known permanent photograph taken from a nature scene called ‘ View from the Window at Le Gras’. In 1813, lithography became fashionable in France which got Nicephore Niepce to start experimenting with printing techniques. He used many different light sensitive substances to cover pewter in hopes that the sunlight would engrave an image on the light sensitive material. Following his success in 1822 of engraving an mage on glass, Niepce decided he wanted to try and produce a permanent image by using a camera and a metal pewter plate. To produce the permanent image Niepce used a light-tight box with a hole in it (a pinhole camera). He then prepared a polished pewter plate coated with light-sensitive bitumen of Judea because he knew that it hardened when exposed to light, and placed it in the camera obscura. Later on, Niepce created another heliograph which solved the problem of reproducing nature by light and created the first photomechanical reproduction process.
Louis Daguerre & daguerreotype:
Following on from heliography, Louis Daguerre invented the daguerreotype in January 1839 as Niepce was unable to reduce the problem of having long exposure times when producing his images. The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process which was mainly used to take portraits but was also used to produce landscape images. Daguerreotypes were only used by the wealthy people as they were able to afford to have their portrait taken. The process of making a daguerreotype was long ,the images were fixed on to a mirrored metal plate that consisted of s copper plated sheet coated with a sheet of silver. The silver plate was polished and cleaned to look like a mirror which is why the Daguerreotype was known as a ‘mirror with a memory.’ Once the plate was exposed to light it was developed over hot mercury, so light was shining back through the plate, until an image appeared. The silver grains would sit up on the surface which, made the image feel ‘alive’. The only problem with the daguerreotype was that you couldn’t reproduce the image.
In 1838, Louis Daguerre took ‘The Boulevard du Temple’ which is one of the very first daguerreotypes. Within the image you can only see two figures. This is because they were the only two subjects who were in the same position, for the seven minutes, while the image was being taken. As a long exposure was needed nothing else appeared on the busy Boulevard du Temple.
‘The Boulevard du Temple’
Henry Fox Talbot & calotype:
Shortly after the daguerreotype, Henry Fox Talbot invented the calotype in the autumn of 1840. Henry Fox Talbot was an English inventor, born in 1800 and died in 1877. The calotype was the first negative to positive photographic technology, where the negatives that were produced are then turned into a positive image. The process involved using a paper negative to make a print with a softer, less sharp image than a daguerreotype. Henry Fox Talbot experimented with silver nitrate and potassium iodine solution on paper, when exposed to light an image was produced. Talbot fixed the problem with the log exposure times needed for an image to be produced as the camera only took two minutes to produce the image. Unlike the daguerreotype you were able to produce a copy of the image this is because negatives were produced.
Robert Cornelius & self portraiture:
In 1939 Robert Cornelius designed the first photographic plate for the first image taken in the United States which was an image of Central High School, taken by Joseph Saxton and his self image taken in 1839 was first photographic portrait taken in the United States. Cornelius stood in front of a makeshift camera with a lens made from an opera glass in his yard. The daylight had been assessed and approved by Cornelius so, that it fulfilled the requirements for his prepared metal plate. As the photo was being taken Robert Cornelius had to be motionless for around ten to fifteen minutes.
Julia Margaret Cameron & Pictorialism:
After Robert Cornelius’ self portrait, portraiture photography started to take off. Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer who is considered to be one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. Cameron was a involved in the pictorialism movement as her photos were inspired by the sublime and beauty. Julia Margaret Cameron’s style of photography was taking close-up portraits, with soft focus and dramatic lighting. Most of Cameron’s portraits were of famous Victorian men, she wanted to capture the beauty in men and women. When choosing her female subjects she chose them for their beauty, which links back to pictorialism as she emphasizes the raw and natural beauty of her subjects rather than using them as a form of documentation photography.
Henry Mullins & Carte-de-Visite:
In the 1840’s studio photography was introduced, photography became more about the money, rather than the love of taking photos as people would take photos for commercials. One of the most popular studio photographers in the 1850’s was Henry Mullins. Mullins would take portraits of people based off of their social hierarchy and class in his studio, that he set up when he moved to Jersey in July 1848. His studio was known as the ‘Royal Saloon’. Mullins made four albums from his portraits, ordering them in social hierarchy, with the highest social class being at the start of the album. Henry Mullins specialised in carte-de-visite which was a small photograph on a piece of visit card.
The camera obscura, from the Latin meaning ‘dark chamber’, was one of the inventions that led to photography. The camera obscura has been a source of fascination to people for hundreds of years; originally used to observe solar eclipses safely, they were recognised as an aid to drawing in the 15th Century, and by the 19th Century they had become popular seaside attractions, much as binoculars are today. Some of these seaside cameras obscura’s still exist.
The first camera obscura was simply a small hole in one wall of a darkened room or tent. Light passing through the hole formed an inverted (upside down) image of the outside scene on a white screen placed across the room from the hole. Artists made use of the camera obscura, realising that they could trace the outlines of buildings, trees, shadows and animals to aid in the creation of their paintings.
The Pinhole Camera
The pinhole has played an important role in the evolution of the modern camera. Pinhole photography is lensless photography – a method of capturing images using a simple light-tight box with a single pinhole in one end. A piece of opaque tape or cardboard can serve as a shutter. Film or photo-paper is taped inside and the camera secured on a stable platform or tripod, exposure is calculated and the shutter opened. After the shutter is closed the camera is taken in
Nicephore Niepce & Heliography
Niépce developed heliography, a technique he used to create the world’s oldest surviving product of a photographic process: a print made from a photoengraved printing plate in 1825. In 1826 or 1827, he used a primitive camera to produce the oldest surviving photograph of a real-world scene.
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (French, 1765–1833), Untitled ‘point de vue,’ 1827. Heliograph on pewter, 16.7 x 20.3 x .15 cm.
Motivated by the growing popular demand for affordable pictures, Niépce’s photographic experiments were conducted with the dual aims of copying prints and recording scenes from real life in the camera. At his family estate in the nearby village of Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, he produced legible but fleeting camera pictures in 1816. Over the next decade he tried an array of chemicals, materials, and techniques to advance the process he ultimately called héliographie, or ‘sun writing.’
How did Niecpe do it?
To make the heliograph, Niépce dissolved light-sensitive bitumen in oil of lavender and applied a thin coating over a polished pewter plate. He inserted the plate into a camera obscura and positioned it near a window in his second-story workroom. After several days of exposure to sunlight, the plate yielded an impression of the courtyard, outbuildings, and trees outside.
The process of Heliography:
The naturally occurring asphalt bitumen, is applied as a coating on glass or metal
This chemical then hardens in relation to the light exposure available
The plate is then washed with oil of lavender
After washing with oil, the only area remaining would be the hardened area where the image formed.
Louis Daguerre & Daguerreotype
In 1826, when Joseph-Nicephore Niepce took the world first photograph, it took eight hours to expose. Little more than ten years later, his associate Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre devised a way to permanently reproduce an image, and his picture—a daguerreotype—needed just twenty minutes’ exposure. A practical process of photography was born.
In January of 1839, the invention of a photographic system that would fix the image caught in the camera obscura was formally announced in the London periodical The Athenaeum.
Louis Daguerre called his invention “daguerreotype.” His method, which he disclosed to the public late in the summer of 1839, consisted of treating silver-plated copper sheets with iodine to make them sensitive to light, then exposing them in a camera and “developing” the images with warm mercury vapor. The fumes from the mercury vapor combined with the silver to produce an image. The plate was washed with a saline solution to prevent further exposure.
Boulevard du Temple, Paris, 3rd arrondissement, a street scene captured in a Daguerreotype in either 1838 or 1839. Believed to be the earliest photograph showing a living person. It is a view of a busy street, but because the exposure time was at least ten minutes the moving traffic left no trace. Only the two men near the bottom left corner, one apparently having his boots polished by the other, stayed in one place long enough to be visible. (Louis Daguerre)
Henry Fox Talbot & Calotype
William Henry Fox Talbot was credited as the British inventor of photography. In 1834 he discovered how to make and fix images through the action of light and chemistry on paper. These ‘negatives’ could be used to make multiple prints and this process revolutionised image making.
WHAT IS THE CALOTYPE?
In this technique, a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride was exposed to light in a camera obscura those areas hit by light became dark in tone, yielding a negative image. The revolutionary aspect of the process lay in Talbot’s discovery of a chemical (gallic acid) that could be used to “develop” the image on the paper—i.e., accelerate the silver chloride’s chemical reaction to the light it had been exposed to. The developing process permitted much shorter exposure times in the camera, down from one hour to one minute.
The developed image on the paper was fixed with sodium hyposulfite. The “negative,” as Talbot called it, could yield any number of positive images by simple contact printing upon another piece of sensitized paper. Talbot’s process was superior in this respect to the daguerreotype, which yielded a single positive image on metal that could not be duplicated. Talbot patented his process in 1841.
Robert Cornelius & self-portraiture
A self-portrait is a representation of an artist that is drawn, painted, photographed, or sculpted by that artist (a selfie).
The world’s first “selfie,” a self-portrait taken by Cornelius in 1839.
The image above was taken in 1839 by an amateur chemist and photography enthusiast from Philadelphia named Robert Cornelius. Cornelius had set his camera up at the back of the family store in Philadelphia. He took the image by removing the lens cap and then running into frame where he sat for a minute before covering up the lens again. On the back he wrote “The first light Picture ever taken. 1839.”
Julia Margeret Cameron & Pictorialism
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815 – 79) was an ambitious and devoted pioneer of photography. Best known for her powerful portraits, she also posed her sitters – friends, family and servants – as characters from biblical, historical or allegorical stories.
Pictorialism is an approach to photography that emphasizes beauty of subject matter, tonality, and composition rather than the documentation of reality.
Examples of pictorialism:
On one occasion Julia printed a negative by the pioneering Swedish art photographer O.G. Rejlander, surrounding the portrait with ferns to create a photo-gram frame – a combination of an image made in a camera and a camera-less technique. It shows Cameron’s experimental nature and provides a glimpse of her photographic practice before she acquired a camera of her own.
Within a month of receiving her camera, she made the photograph that she called her ‘first success’, a portrait of Annie Philpot, the daughter of a family staying in the Isle of Wight where Cameron lived. She later wrote of her excitement:
I was in a transport of delight. I ran all over the house to search for gifts for the child. I felt as if she entirely had made the picture.
-Julia Margaret Cameron
From her ‘first success’ she moved on quickly to photographing family and friends. These early portraits reveal how she experimented with soft focus, dramatic lighting and close-up compositions, features that would become her signature style; pictorialism.
Henry Mullins & Carte-de-Visit
Gustav William Henry Mullins (1854-1921) was a portrait photographer, patronised by Queen Victoria. Gustav Mullins was a partner in the firm Hughes & Mullins, photographers, based at Union Street, Ryde, Isle of Wight.
Cartes De Visite
His specialty was cartes de visite and the photographic archive of La Société contains a massive collection of these. Their on line archive contains 9600 images, but the majority of these are sets of up to 16 photographs taken at a single sitting. In those times even 10s 6d was a substantial sum to pay to have one’s photograph taken, and included among his subjects are many of the island’s affluent and influential people, including Dean Le Breton, the father of Lillie Langtry.
He was also popular with officers of the Royal Militia Island of Jersey, for whom it was very popular to have portraits taken, as well as of their wives and children, for the more senior and more affluent officers. The pictures of these officers show clearly the fashion for long hair, whiskers and beards in the mid-1800s.
Named after Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, the great Dutch painter, Rembrandt lighting is a common technique for portrait photography. This lighting creates an upside-down triangle on the subjects cheek.
Spotlights were used in Hollywood in the early 20th century to create more realistic effects of light and shadows in the boring typical lighting set up. Rembrant lighting was introduced as an effect and started being used widely in promotional photographs of film stars.
Rembrandt lighting creates dramatic shadows and definition in the models face, enhancing facial feature (like butterfly lighting gut with different shadows). Its effective as it acts as a photographic device to draw the eye.
Rembrandt lighting adds an element of drama and psychological depth to the character of your sitter.
With the eyes being one of the most important and interesting details of a portrait, the triangle of light on the cheek manages to enhance this and intensify the eyes shape and detail, drawing the viewer to the image.
How is Rembrandt lighting created?
Place the main light source 40 to 45-degree angle and higher than the subject. Use cans use both flashlights and continuous lights. (I used flash lighting to create a stronger shadow). Use a 35mm or 50mm if space is at a premium. You can add a reflector to light enhance the light.
My final photos – overall these images turned out alright however I didn’t get many with the triangle of light fully clear so I would like to redo this shoot. My camera was also slightly out of focus so in my next shoot I will fix this.
Chiaroscuro is the use of contrast between light and dark to emphasize and illuminate important figures in a painting or drawing. It was first introduced during the Renaissance. It was originally used while drawing on coloured paper though it is now used in paintings and even cinema.
The term originally came from the Renaissance art movement, It refers to the dramatic effect experienced when using contrasting areas of light and dark in a visual piece.
This is what the lighting set up in the studio would look like.
This type of lighting balances high-contrast light and shade to give the appearance of depth, creating an enhanced or more dramatic effect. It also creates three-dimensionality on a two-dimensional plane, darkening the background and highlighting the subject in the foreground, drawing the viewer’s focus and attention.
I used the Rembrandt Lighting technique to produce some high quality photos with Jude. I made these by having the light pointed at Jude at a certain angle to light up certain parts of his face and I think they turned out very good.
Butterfly Lighting:
Myself and Jude were in these photos, we positioned the light above us to cast the butterfly shadow under our noses and took the photos. These turned out very well detailed and sharp.
Back lighting:
We decided to experiment with the flash light and take photos of us facing in it’s direction to create a silhouette, these turned out pretty good.
The pictures marked as green are the ones I will edit and the yellow shows the photos I will most likely not edit
For these pictures, I focused on the butterfly and Rembrandt lighting techniques. I think I managed to get some successful outcomes, especially for the Rembrandt technique, the photos having deep contrasting tones and the illuminated triangle on the darker side of the face.
We did a small-scale photoshoot around the school for environmental portraiture, walking around and finding different areas where we could find people going about their day that wouldn’t mind having some photos taken. We ended up avoiding study areas so as to not disturb people and went to other common areas such as the canteen and the school car park, where we took some images of the exterior of the school.
I sorted through the images I wanted to keep to edit, gave them a star rating and colour coded them based on whether they would be good to edit or not in lightroom, and started working on them.
I only ended up editing 4 of these photographs, as a lot of them were out of focus or had poor lighting.
These were the 4 I was left with, and I quite like how they turned out.
These two images, taken in the canteen, show Jonah sitting down at a table during a free period, where he was socialising with others sitting with him. He doesn’t make a direct mode of address with the camera, which hints at his focus on other people in a social space, as opposed to an isolated photograph where it would be just him and the photographer. There’s a theme of colder tones in both photos, which works quite well with the more orange hues in the canteen’s furniture and Jonah’s blue clothing.
This image of me was taken at the top of the art block’s stairs, using warmer tones and softer natural lighting to show a more relaxed, quiet setting, juxtaposing the more crowded social areas in the building. The photograph works well as a composition, but I believe more lighting would be necessary on my face to improve the result of the image, as it’s quite low in exposure and isn’t as eye-catching as the red object on the left-hand side of the photo.
This last photograph is also of me, sitting on my motorbike in the school’s car park. The image also contains warmer tones and has an all-around good composition when it comes to contrast, framing, and shadows. However, my main issue with this photo is that the sun is directly behind me, creating a lens flare in the final image and making it harder to adjust the exposure on my face when it comes to editing.
